Maggie's Farm

I grew up playing computer games, mostly of the strategy variety, in the 1980s. I loved games like Civilization, Sid Meier's Pirates! and Gettysburg.

When my oldest was about 10 years old, he wanted to play a shooter game. I never had, and thought they were dangerous in that they might make someone want to shoot people in real life. Several of my best students had argued with me that the myth wasn't true at all. The rule in our house was no blood in your video games, so my son found a free online shooter with no blood called Battlefield Online. I decided to let him try it with the understanding that if it caused any violent behavior, I would take it away.

We have two computers at the same work desk, so while I was teaching online that summer I watched him get killed again and again in this shooter. I gave him a few suggestions I thought would help him improve and he said "Dad, you couldn't do any better". Ok, you're on.

The first couple of rounds I was indeed worse than him. The controls were completely counter-intuitive to me and I was slaughtered horribly (think about a 3/25 kill death ratio per round for those of you who have played a shooter).

But as I got the hang of it and learned to use my weapons and to move more efficiently I broke even and eventually was good enough to finish near the top of the leaderboard in almost every round.

Even though I was one of the older players, I enjoyed the pure competition of it. I felt NO desire to shoot anyone in real life just because I was doing it in a video game about shooting people on a battlefield.

When Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 came out on the CPU, my son and I both played them and I was very good there, too. Not professional gamer good. I played in matches with and against some of the guys who were that good. They were as much better than me as a professional baseball player is better than a good beer league softball player.

I would argue that hand eye coordination and twitch reflexes gave them the advantage. That and a top dollar gaming rig, which I was never tempted to buy.

But my point is that being good at a video game is a skill. It isn't one I value as highly as communication skills or a strong work ethic. I don't mind top gamers getting paid big $ because people want to watch them play.

While it may seem silly to people our age to think of it as a job, to our current teenagers, being a professional video gamer is just as much a "real job" as being a pro baseball player is. The money isn't the same right now, but it might be some day as the gaming culture becomes more accepted and lucrative.

I also agree with Feeblemind that one of the attractions of games is that they let the player drive the story. When I watch a baseball game or a movie, I am a passive consumer. But the best games allow me to change the story and feel like I did it.

And when used properly, they are a FUN way to relieve stress. When I had a bad day teaching college freshmen, it was fun to come home and shoot the characters of people that age online. After I had gotten very good at it, some of the guys I had killed online would say silly things like "Dean, I bet you are a fat loser living in your mom's basement who has never had a date in your life!" It was their way of telling me to get a life.

I think that games will become even more immersive and fun in the future. I will likely be too old to care about most of them. But I expect that the people who are stellar at playing them will be bigger and bigger stars to the people who are only average.